Facebook on Tuesday unveiled a new friends list feature that will let you more easily categorize groups of friends.
You can create your own lists and manage what friends appear in them, but Facebook will also automatically group people into work, school, family, and city lists based on the information they provide in their profile. The social-networking site has also set up a "close friends" and "acquaintances" option.
Then, when you go to update your Facebook profile, you can select the people who will see the post based on your lists, much like the Circles feature in Google+.
"Lists have existed for several years, but you've told us how time-consuming it is to organize lists for different parts of your life and keep them up to date," Blake Ross, director of product at Facebook, wrote in a blog post.
With Smart lists, Facebook will automatically group all your college or high school friends into "school" lists, or put all your co-workers into the "work" list. If Facebook makes a mistake or you don't want someone in that group, you can add or delete them manually.
"Managing lists is boring. That's why smart lists do the work for you," Ross wrote.
With the close friends list, you'll be able to see a version of your news feed that only includes updates from these people, and you can receive updates when these people post updates.
With acquaintances like business associates or people you haven't seen since nursery school, you'll see less of those people in your news feed. "We'll still show you important things they post—like when they get married or move to a new city—so you don't lose touch completely," Ross said.
There will also be a restricted list for "your boss or the few other people you like but just don't want to share with on Facebook," he continued. You'll still be "friends," but they will only see your public posts.
Old lists will also still be active, and you can still create other random lists. But while friends won't be able to see the names of the lists you create, they will be able to see the other people in that group.
"This gives them more context. For example, if I see that a post is shared with my five closest friends, I am much more likely to comment freely on it than I would be if I didn't know who else could see the post," Ross said.
As soon as you confirm someone as a new friend, you can select the list on which they'll appear.
Today's update comes several weeks after Facebook updated its security features in order to more clearly help users define who could see what information. For more, see the slideshow below.